


The Cowboy

by thesmallchameleon



Series: Tales Not Worth Telling [1]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: :(, Alternate Origin Story, As in the events rewritten are canonically possibly fake, Blood, Breaking and Entering, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Gambling, Gen, Gun Violence, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Homelessness, Implied Attempt at Child Enslavement, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kidnapping, Manipulation, Medical Torture, Orphanage, Parent Death, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm By Recklessness, Semi-Canon Compliant, Stabbing, a LOT of crimes, a little bit of arson, as a treat, it's Mechs fanfic what do you expect lol, just wow, non-consensual immortality, smoking mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24785254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesmallchameleon/pseuds/thesmallchameleon
Summary: Jonny d'Ville was many things. A murderer, thief and crook? Absolutely. An immortal, immoral, maniacal musician? Undeniably. The respected and beloved captain of the spaceship Aurora? Indisputably.But first and foremost, he was a storyteller. And the thing was, it just wasn't a very good story.Or how Jonny d'Ville came to be. Even if it's not how he tells it.
Relationships: Dr Carmilla & Jonny d'Ville
Series: Tales Not Worth Telling [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792681
Comments: 9
Kudos: 101





	The Cowboy

**Author's Note:**

> So this kind of came out of how I feel like the Jonny d'Ville that Jonny Sims played on stage was a bit different from the Jonny d'Ville featured in some of the songs and fiction. And I guess this is the result of me thinking about his stage persona and trying to figure out where that version of the character might have come from and why and how he might manipulate the stories he tells to affect peoples' perception of him. Anyway, all that to say I wrote a different version of his origin story lol. Hope you like it!

Jonny d'Ville was many things. A murderer, thief and crook? Absolutely. An immortal, immoral, maniacal musician? Undeniably. The respected and beloved captain of the spaceship Aurora? Indisputably.

But first and foremost, he was a storyteller. And the thing was, it just wasn't a very good story.

He wouldn't have bothered telling anything at all if it had been left to him, but of course when you travel around from system to system singing songs and telling tales of cosmic tragedies and existential impossibilities, boasting a crew of immortal jackasses all sporting rather…unique augmentations. Well. People start to wonder where you came from.

It was anyone's guess how he would respond to the unlucky wretch who asked him if his story was true. The crew of the Aurora had seen him grin and claim that he’d made it all up, fly into an indignant rage that anyone suggest his stories to be anything less than the honest truth, and once stab a man through the hand he placed on the table as he'd leaned in and asked. (The Mechanisms, as a general rule, tried to limit the amount of violence they extended towards concert-goers. After all, if they killed all their audience, people would eventually stop going to see them. But to be fair, the man who had asked the question had approached him in the pub while he was trying to enjoy celebratory post-concert drinks with his crew and leered in a way that made everyone at the table uncomfortable. Nobody blamed him.) Mostly, though, he would simply laugh and walk away, leaving them confused if not more than a little unsettled.

The crew knew better than to ask themselves. After all, the Aurora was home to a crew of broken souls, and whatever story they wished to share—however true, false or nonexistent—was the one that was told.

And so what if his mother wasn't really a tailor? If he never really knew what it is she _was_ , if he only remembered her leaving early in the mornings and coming back late into the nights, weary and worn, if his clearest memory was that of her pressing a needle into his hand and showing him how to make tight, neat stitches that pulled together ragged edges and made something whole again, if not unchanged well, wasn't that close enough?

He knew what she looked like, intellectually, but her face was always a bit fuzzy in the middle. He could describe the quality of her voice, but could never quite hear it form any actual words. He knew her the way you knew a dream—certain, and slipping, and inconsequential.

So really, what did it matter, what she was or wasn't? If he, a…thing…so old he had long since stopped keeping track, didn't know a thing about her, why should anyone else?

His father was most definitely a gambling man. Though what exactly it was he gambled _with_ , Jonny couldn't say. He mostly remembered the man drinking and smoking and sleeping the day away while his mother was working, then leaving in the night as soon as she returned, slamming the door on his way out. He never knew where he went, but he would often wake to the heavy sound of footsteps late into the night when he returned.

And when his debts, whatever they were, finally caught up with him, Jonny was only eleven. He was playing cards by himself on the floor of the sitting room while his mother slept in the bedroom after coming home early for once, and his father sat in his armchair, smoking as usual.

They knocked first (Jonny remembered the sound of the three heavy knocks that rattled the hinges) but they didn't wait to be let in. He remembered jumping to his feet in shock, and backing against the wall as three strangers came into his home, leaving the door wide open as if mocking the idea that it had ever been a barrier to entry in the first place. His father looked up, seeming entirely unaffected and in no way surprised.

He couldn't remember the conversation, not really. But he knew it regarded some sort of debt, and that when his father finally rose from that awful chair and beckoned for him, not even looking at him as he said "Come here boy," he unstuck himself from the wall and came. And when his father's hand rested on his shoulder, it was only for a moment before he was shoved forward, stumbling towards the man who had been doing most of the talking. The man caught him by the arm, glanced over him roughly, then gave half a bitter laugh and shoved him out of the way, drawing a gun instead and pointing it at his father.

Jonny heard the gunshot, but he didn't turn to look. Instead, he ran. Out the open door. And when he heard more gunshots barely after he had made it down the steps, he knew that there wasn't anything left to come back to.

After that it was all pretty standard. He spent a few months begging on the streets before being picked up by police and deposited directly into a children's home. Another half a year listening in fascination to an older girl tell stories about brave knights, swashbuckling pirates and interstellar travelers who flew great ships from system to system. (He never liked reading much—the words seemed to muddle themselves together on the page and it never seemed worth the headache—but he always found himself gripped by a good story when it was told right.) Another month or so was spent in numb disbelief after she disappeared without ever finishing the story of Everest the Skyfairer who sailed through the clouds on a great winged ship. Whether she was taken in, ran away, or simply aged out, he never knew. But the story had been left unfinished, and that made him angry.

And for the last few years of his stay at the children’s home, angry was all he was. He lashed out at the caretakers, got into viscous fights with the other residents, and ran away on more than one occasion, only to be dragged back, kicking and screaming, and locked in the quiet room until his arms were raw with scratches and his scalp sore from tugging at his hair. He wasn’t the sort to win fights. He was small, bony and soft in equal measures. But when the mood struck him, a feral energy would take over and he would continue to fight despite the blood and bruises and broken bones. He was a nightmare, really, for the charitable caretakers who just wanted to save a few poor children. What else could they do but lock him up, and do their best to keep him away from the others?

And so, when the good Dr. Carmilla came to the children’s home, asking after a ward, it was really no surprise that the headmaster took one look at the cold, calculating woman before them and dragged out 14 year old Jonny, puffy and ragged and still a bit bruised from his last run-in with someone bigger and stronger than he ever would be.

The doctor had stared at him for several long moments, at the tears in the knees of his trousers and the missing buttons from his shirt that he knew how to fix but didn’t because why bother when they would just be torn and lost again, at the scrappy pubescent hairs that broke surface on the corners of his lip, at the dark dullness in his eyes, and the set of his mouth that spoke of an insatiable anger at the broken world around him, and perhaps more so, Jonny bitterly mused in later years, a stark resignation that this was the world as it always would be.

The doctor smiled.

The first few weeks of living in Dr. Carmilla’s mansion were strange. He rarely saw her outside of mealtimes, and even then, many came and went with her still in her lab, doing whatever it was she did all day. His days were spent poking through the endless labyrinth of twisting halls and empty rooms, and when he bored of that, exploring the woods surrounding the vast estate. The doctor kept a small staff, but they rarely spoke and seemed to appear only as needed and disappear the moment they weren’t, so Jonny never found the opportunity to start anything. He wasn’t soothed, separated from any potential opponents as he was, but he felt as though his anger was put on hold, shelved just for a bit while he waited to see what happened next.

And then, Dr. Carmilla had a patient.

Jonny had been trying to whittle a hunk of old wood he had found in the woods, and mostly just nicking himself in the process, when he heard the carriage pull up. That was odd. The doctor went out into town very rarely, but it happened every now and again. This time, though, he hadn’t seen her leave.

He went to the window and watched as an unfamiliar carriage stopped in the driveway, and the footman went to open the door. An old man in tails stepped out. He held an air of prestige about him, and yet even from the window Jonny could sense an underlying unease in his gait.

In the weeks or months he’d been there (trying to recall the exact period of time was as impossible as it was pointless) the doctor had never taken a visitor. And so it was with an all-consuming curiosity that Jonny watched the man disappear from his line of sight as he approached the entrance. And it was with that same curiosity that he quietly left his room to duck down the hall and behind the banister to watch the scene unfolding in the foyer unnoticed.

The doctor did not come to meet her visitor at the door. The footman took his coat and left to hang it while the butler lead him to Dr. Carmilla’s lab. Jonny had to come down about halfway down the staircase to get a clear view of the butler knocking curtly on the lab door, but he could move quietly when he needed to, and he remained hidden enough.

After a moment, the door opened and Dr. Carmilla stepped forward to greet her guest. Jonny saw the way his heel slipped back half an inch or so when he saw her and his curiosity peaked. Even so, when the doctor stepped aside and gestured the man into her lab, he entered without hesitation. The doctor lingered in the doorway for a moment. She looked down the hall, then up the stairs. When her eyes landed on Jonny he froze, ready for a fight. But she just smiled.

The man’s voice drifted from the lab.

“Is everything alright doctor?”

She turned her head only slightly, never breaking Jonny’s gaze.

“Yes,” she said. “There’s been something in the vents. I thought I might have seen it slip in just now.”

Only the did she turn and reenter the lab. He could still hear her voice ringing through the hall.

“But no, just a shadow.”

The heavy door closed with a solid click. Jonny stared at it for a moment, baffled at what had just passed between them. He glanced around, searching, but it wasn’t until he looked behind him that he spotted it: a grating set into the wall at the top of the stairs.

It took a fair amount of scraping and dulling of his pocket knife, but he managed to remove the screws and pull away the panel. The tunnel was narrow and did the doctor really expect him to squirm through there? He was somewhat… stunted for his age, but even so. He thought about clumsily replacing the panel and going back to his room to stab wood and his unfortunate fingers in peace. But then, he might never know about this man, and more importantly, why he was afraid of Dr. Carmilla.

He entered the vent, pulling the grating closed behind him (or at least propping it up as best he could without looking or particularly caring.) The tunnel didn’t seem as small once he was in it, and he had enough room to crawl without banging around too much. He was, after all, a very scrawny fourteen, if not a little childishly soft around the cheeks and middle. The vent was cool metal beneath his palms, and he did not mind the way his knees protested the hard surface they pressed against.

It wasn’t long before the tunnel branched off, but he was pretty sure he knew the direction of the doctor’s lab and took it. Sure enough, he saw light coming up through a vent down just a little ways. He crawled up to the down-facing grating and saw for the first time the inside of the lab. He settled onto his belly, resting his chin on his folded hands, to watch.

The lab seemed to be as neat as it could be, given the clutter. A collection of tools and machinery that Jonny didn’t recognize lined the walls of the room, all brass and glass and whirring cogs, vials of clear and coloured liquids dripping down coiling tubes, and a collection of dark cabinets that might have held any number of further mysteries. In the middle of the room was a very utilitarian metal examination table modified with a few leather straps that Jonny could imagine being used to keep unwieldy patients in place.

The current patient, however, was still standing by the door, seemingly paused in the act of unbuttoning his shirt. Jonny recoiled, almost hitting his head on the top of the vent. If this was some sort of fucked up act of voyeurism, he didn’t want any part of it. But just when he was considering scrambling back through the tunnel, something caught his eye that made him settle back on his stomach, too curious for his own good. There was a glint of something shiny peaking out from the man’s shirt.

Or at least, he liked to think that’s why he stayed. It makes for a better story than the possibly more realistic notion that he decided to watch because they looked to be in the middle of a rather interesting argument. What could he say? He’d always been a sucker for a good fight.

“To be expected!?” the man stormed, "With all due respect _Doctor_ , I expect your infernal mechanisms to work as intended. And, might I remind you, as promised and _payed for_."

The doctor turned from where she had been laying out tools. The angle didn't allow Jonny to see her face, but he could hear the grim dissatisfaction in her voice.

"My 'mechanism,' as you put it, has been the only thing keeping you alive for nearly a century, dear Professor, and, as I will have you remember, has only brought you into my lab as a result of your treatment of it."

The man fumed.

"I will not have your chastening Carmilla," he said. "It is no fault of mine that your machines do not stand the test of time."

The doctor stepped towards the man, and Jonny didn't miss the way his heel slid back, just a touch.

"You will call me by my title _Professor_ , or you will get out of my lab."

The man grimaced, and hissed.

"This is as much your lab as a servant’s sleeping quarters are his. If it weren't for the funds I provide you, you would be practicing on the streets. So I suggest you _fix this_ or I will see you ruined faster than—”

It was with such speed that the doctor surged forward that she almost appeared to have not moved at all, merely disappeared from one location in space and reappear in another, pushing the man up against the solid door of the lab with her hand around his neck. He hit it with a crack as his head recoiled against the heavy wood, eyes wide.

"You dare threaten me in my own home?" the doctor intoned, her voice a steady stream of quiet fury. "You are not the only fool to come to my doorstep begging immortality, nor will you be the last."

The doctor pressed the other hand to the man's sternum and he gasped, choking in apparent pain.

"I do not need you Professor, and I never have. If I have led you to believe that, it has only been for your comfort, of which I now find myself of no inclination to cultivate. _Time_ is no object to my machines and I promise that the cogs that turn beneath your skin will continue to do so long after it has melted away. I have given you a _gift_ and you will do well to remember that it will be no grievance to me to take it away."

The pained expression on the man's face loosened as Jonny assumed the doctor let up the pressure on his chest.

"Do you understand?" she asked. The man seemed to still be catching his breath. The doctor waited patiently. At length, he nodded.

"Yes," he said.

The doctor stepped away, leaving the man to lean heavily against the wall and rub idly at his chest, wincing.

"And yet, it rusts," he said quietly, then froze in apparent fear. But the doctor only laughed.

"I sincerely doubt that," she said, returning to laying out her tools, and selecting a pair of thin black rubber gloves.

"How are you so sure?" the man asked, still wary, but mouth twisting in doubt.

"Because brass, my dear Professor," the doctor said, pulling on the gloves, "does not rust."

When the man sat down on the edge of the examination table and finished removing his shirt, Jonny had a clear view of what had been hiding beneath his clothes. There was a large brass panel set into his chest, tarnished in the cracks between the segments that formed the plane of his chest. The doctor pulled a little wheeled table over to the examination table and leaned close to examine the plate. She ran her finger across it, seemingly scraping some tarnish from its surface. She examined the residue on her gloved finger closely.

"Well it isn't rust," she said, not without some small degree of amusement.

The man didn’t appear to be relieved, and instead watched her closely as she studied the substance. She seemed to catch his eye.

“Oh please don’t tell me you’ve bought into that ugly little rumor,” she said when she caught him staring.

The man frowned, but remained sober.

“You can’t blame people for wondering, Doctor,” he said without shame.

“Yes but, drinking blood, really? It’s just so…gothic.”

He gave her an unimpressed look.

“Perhaps if you revealed your methods for maintaining such a youthful disposition, people would be less inclined to postulate.”

She wet a white cloth with a bottle of something clear, and began cleaning away the substance crusting the grooves of the plating before she answered him. On the rag, the dark substance turned pink.

“As I have said time and time again,” she said, “there is simply no substitute for good genetics.”

The man didn’t seemed pleased by this answer in the slightest, but didn’t push it further. Perhaps because he was afraid to, perhaps because he knew he would get no further information, or perhaps because the good doctor was now pulling out a small key and inserting it into an almost invisible divot in the panel in his chest and turning it.

Jonny leaned closer, nose pressing against the grating, as the doctor pried open the plate.

From what he could see, it appeared the man’s insides looked exactly like inside of a person’s chest should look like, if only entirely wrought in brass. A dark red substance pooled in the crevices. Jonny was familiar enough to recognize it.

The man seemed alarmed, looking down at the blood that dripped from him, and Jonny swore he could hear a subtle whir as his heart rate picked up speed.

The doctor made a thoughtful noise, then pushed him back so he was lying on the table and got to work.

Jonny wasn’t sure what she was doing as she tinkered, occasionally clearing blood away as it obstructed her work, but it certainly didn’t seem painless for the man who’s insides she played upon. He grimaced and gasped at regular intervals, occasionally pressing his hand to his mouth to muffle a moan of pain. The doctor didn’t seem to mind, though after his knee jerked up involuntarily, she strapped the offending limb to the table before continuing as if undisturbed.

Jonny watched with a grim sort of fascination. He had no academic interest in science or medicine, and he gained no satisfaction from seeing a man in pain, but there was something about the methodical way that the doctor worked, something about knowing that this man was willingly subjecting himself to such torture for the hubristic purpose of extending his own life, something about the thinly walked line of friendship and antagonism between the two of them…it intrigued him. And so he watched. 

Not to mention, the bloodied mechanical organs were objectively cool to look at.

By the time the doctor finished, Jonny had slipped into an almost trance and the man on the table was panting and spasming gently in pain. She finished cleaning up the last of the blood that had crusted, then closed him back up and twisted the key one more time in the lock before slipping it back into her pocket. She pulled the little table with her tools over to the sink, and began cleaning them, as the man sweated and shivered back to himself in equal measure.

When she finally pulled off her gloves and washed her hands, he had stilled and his breathing returned to a shallow, but steady rhythm. He touched his chest gingerly and winced, then pushed himself upright with an aching slowness to sit on the edge of the table as he had before. He pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed shakily at his beaded brow.

"Well?" he asked finally, hoarsely.

The doctor dried her hands and turned to him.

"You're getting shorter," she said, accusing. "Your body is no longer fitted to my machine. I've made some adjustments to relieve the pressure, but this will take further work to reconcile."

The man stilled, a hollow fear evident on his face.

"I'm aging," he said, quietly. "I know. It's happened so slowly, I almost didn't notice. I could…pretend I didn't notice. But—"

He cut himself off, pressing his lips together thinly. The doctor sighed.

"I've done what I can to extend your life," she said, "but there is only so much I can do. It's true, my machines are able to slow down the aging process, but true immortality…the universe does not allow for such things to be. All will come to an end, eventually."

This did not appear to comfort the man, but perhaps it wasn't meant to. The truths of the universe are so rarely designed to comfort us.

The doctor placed her hand on his shoulder. He didn't flinch, that vacant look in his eye still present.

"You have many more years, dear Professor," she said. "Useful or not, you are one of my oldest friends. As long as you remain so, I intend to keep you on this mortal plane."

He nodded, glancing at her briefly before picking up his shirt with shaking hands and pulling it on. The doctor let her hand fall from his shoulder. She went back to her tools, patting them dry and putting them away while the man slowly did up the fastenings.

Jonny lay there for a long while after the doctor and the professor left. The vent was surprisingly cool, and the close walls and dim light were comforting to him. It was only when the reverie wore off and boredom began to set in again, that he began the awkward shuffle back the way he came.

The doctor didn't appear at dinner that night, and Jonny could hear odd noises from her lab as he passed on his way to bed. Nor did she appear at breakfast or luncheon the next day. But that night, she sent for him, and he found himself for the first time standing in the doctor's private chambers.

She was sitting at her desk when he approached, studying a rather daunting volume with practiced ease, half-moon reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. He wasn't told why she'd called for him, but he had a feeling he knew generally why. Perhaps her comment about the vents hadn't been the hint he had taken it for, and she was expecting to discipline him for spying. Whatever the reason, he approached the desk with hackles raised, frowning as she didn't look away from her text.

He coughed, impatient and obvious, but the doctor continued reading for another long moment, before closing the tome and finally looking up at him. She smiled.

"Ah, Jonathan," and that wasn't even his name. Or at least, he didn't think it was. But the doctor would call him that for the entirety of their time together. Every time except once.

"Whatd'you want?" he asked, already defensive and sparking for a fight.

She studied him carefully, making his lip twitch as he refused to squirm under her disarming gaze.

"Would you like to learn how to shoot?"

And whatever Jonny was expecting her to say, it certainly wasn't that. The shock of it hit him with surprising force, knocking him preverbally (and maybe a little literally) off-balance.

"What, like a gun?" he asked incredulously. The doctor raised her eyebrows, unimpressed.

"No, not 'like' a gun," she said. "A gun. Use proper English, Jonathan."

And that was one of the few fights she never won, not that Jonny thought she ever really tried. It gave him satisfaction, once, when he was too stupid to realize that that was the point of it all. To give him an outlet, a way to rebel and feel like he was winning when in reality there was never a fight to win in the first place.

"Uh, yeah," he said, the pinnacle of eloquence as ever at that age. "Yes, I… yes."

"Good," she said, with another smile. "We'll start tomorrow." Then opened her book again, and he was dismissed.

The next afternoon, after lunch, she had taken him out to the yard where servants had set cans along the back wall and pressed her own silver pistol into his scabby hands and shown him how to cock and load it and line up a shot and let it fly. He missed every single shot he took, but it didn't matter. The doctor didn't seem to mind either, just watching with that little smile, that silent approval as he unloaded round after round, ignoring the recoil as it jammed his shoulder back against him.

By the time they were done, it was late afternoon. Jonny's arms and chest flared in pain, and his ears rang. Every can along the wall stood whole and unpierced, but the surrounding damage was satisfying enough, and he had hit a bird on accident which he honestly thought was more impressive. And when he had grinned at the doctor, she had only smiled.

She didn't let him keep the pistol, but took him into town the very next day for his own. He picked it out himself. It was shorter and sturdier looking than the doctor's sleek silver (though he knew for a fact that such appearances were so often deceiving) and when he got home, he scratched a clumsy J into the handle with his pocket knife and it was his.

After that, Dr. Carmilla started traveling more and, to his surprise, took Jonny with her. She always asked if he wanted to, and while the meetings, house calls, and showings never interested him much, it was somewhere to go and something to do.

It went like this: at dinner or lunch taken at the long dark dining table, the doctor would tell Jonny that she was traveling the next day to some town or city to meet with a materials supplier, or sell a device to a prospective buyer, or show at some exhibition or other and would he like to come along? And he thought about wandering the woods behind the mansion and shooting at birds and rabbits and mostly missing or else carving his name into whatever tree or bookcase or anything he came across out of sheer boredom and decided that yes, he would come along. And so the next day he would haul the doctor's practical trunk into the boot of the coach and throw his own mostly empty luggage on top and stare out the window watching the changing scenery as they approached some inconsequential location where the doctor would promptly disappear to attend whatever business she came to attend and Jonny was free to wander and explore and (on more than one occasion) get himself into some small amount of trouble. The doctor didn't seem to mind in the slightest, and as long as he was back at the coach by the time it was set to leave it didn't matter where he went or what he got up to.

He learned early on that the coach would leave when it was set to leave whether or not he was on it and decided (of his own accord of course) not to push his luck with that single aspect of the journey in particular. So he was always ready to go the moment the pocket watch the doctor had given him said it was time, or else risk walking the however many hour journey back.

Which is why when the doctor herself didn't show at 5 pm on the dot after one particular meeting with a prospective buyer he found himself…not worried. Irritated. He stood beside the carriage, checking his watch every now and again as the sun descended lower into the sky and his irritation grew. He looked back at the driver, who seemed mostly unaffected and not at all impatient to get back. The town wasn't too far from the doctor's home. The journey had only taken two or three hours. With an impatient frown, Jonny decided that should the doctor return and the carriage leave in his absence, he didn't mind the walk back.

And with that, he closed the watch and started in the direction he thought Dr. Carmilla had gone when she had taken her leave that morning. It took a bit of asking around, but it wasn't long before he found the address. It should have been a rather shabby location for a buyer of such cutting-edge technology, but this didn't surprise Jonny. The clients and patients that Dr. Carmilla served were diverse in all manners, and though he never asked about it, he was under the impression that whatever she asked for in return was always something her client was able (if not always entirely willing) to pay.

The curtains were drawn, but not as carefully as perhaps intended, because as Jonny peered through the slit between the drapes he could see for himself a scene that only served to irritate him further: Dr. Carmilla bound, sitting against the far wall, while two imposing figures stood over her.

The doctor, incapacitated as she was, appeared thoroughly bored of the situation, but that did nothing to halt the snarl of anger that crept through Jonny as he watched. One of the figures was shouting, wielding a long, deadly-looking knife wildly in one hand. What they were shouting about, Jonny couldn't care less. But it was when they suddenly drew back and slapped the doctor across the face with their free hand that his anger truly boiled over.

Jonny drew his gun and spun it around in his hand, bringing the handle down hard against the window and ignoring the way the shattered glass burst and cut him. The figures turned at the explosive sound, drawing weapons of their own as they did, but all it took was two shots from Jonny's gun to have them suddenly on the ground, writhing in pain. (He got one in the shoulder, and the other in the thigh, not that he was aiming for anything in particular. It didn't matter, not in the slightest, but he was pretty sure they made it out alive. It would be a while yet before he killed anyone.)

He kicked in the rest of the window, grateful more for the force his sturdy boots allowed then for the protection they afforded him, and climbed through. One of the thugs scrambled for their gun as he crawled in, but he kicked it out of reach before they could and shot them soundly through the hand as he passed.

The doctor was smiling as he picked up the knife one of her assailants had dropped and cut clumsily through her bindings before shoving it in his sock and helping her to her feet.

It must have looked funny, he thought later, a thoroughly cut and bloodied teenager tugging the hand of a full-grown woman, entirely unharmed if not for the fading redness on her cheek where the goon had slapped her. But she let him lead her to the door where he impatiently undid the latch and took her by the hand out into the fading sunlight.

It wasn't until they were at the carriage that the pain started to catch up with him, though he refused to hiss and grimace his way through it. But he let the doctor sit him down on his own luggage and pick out the stubborn bits of glass that stuck in his skin. He even suffered her wrapping the worst of the lacerations if only so he wouldn't bleed all over the upholstery. And if he fell asleep on the journey home, despite the bumping of the carriage jogging his injured limbs, it was certainly _before_ the doctor began mindlessly dragging her fingers through the knots in his hair. She always did have a mind for his appearance, after all.

He still wandered on their journeys, but he got into the habit of seeing the doctor to her destination and hanging around for a bit. He couldn't pretend it wasn't somewhat interesting, the things she got up to, and if it meant that every now and again it gave him the opportunity to draw his pistol on an overly demanding customer, or a stingy supplier, well, he wasn't going to complain.

And they traveled, farther and longer. Going from city to town to village to city, spending days, then weeks, then months away from the mansion before returning for a short respite and setting out again.

Over time, Jonny developed a reputation with the many friends, enemies, and otherwise acquaintances of Dr. Carmilla. Though the first few he met were confused, if not overtly surprised, by the appearance of a ragged teenager in their usual dealings, they soon began to expect—sometimes with trepidation, sometimes with curiosity—the feral watchdog of the good doctor.

He was certain, in retrospect, that she would've been fine on her own and that the illusion that he was somehow protecting her with his presence was carefully cultivated from the beginning so that she could stand by comfortably or attend more important matters while he did her dirty work, but in those years he really did believe it.

As time passed, the dealings Dr. Carmilla took became more and more dangerous. Soon enough he wasn't just standing by her side to shoot the occasional warning shot at an overzealous buyer, but was sent in specifically to burn and hurt and take. The pool of Dr. Carmilla's friends shrank, as their number of enemies grew, but she didn't seem to mind, so why would Jonny? If each trip they set out on put a few more scars on his body, sent a few more bullets flying by his ear, why should he care? They were good, him and the doctor. They were good, and together they were unstoppable.

Jonny was 19 the night it happened. A very young, very angry, very reckless 19. They were returning, as they so rarely but periodically did, to the manor so that the doctor could spend a few weeks tinkering in her lab with some of the new materials they had recently acquired. But when they arrived, in the middle of the night, every window was dark despite the staff being informed of their intended arrival.

He didn't think much of it at first, but when he caught the doctor's expression, when he heard the bitter murmur "my own home," leave her lips, he knew that something waited for them inside. And he was going to kill it.

The doctor stopped him at the entrance, before he could storm in and shoot whatever was putting that look on her face. She grabbed his wrist, fingers curling around the scarred flesh, and held it for a minute or so while he stared at her, expression unreadable in the dark.

And then she'd let go.

He wondered, time and time again, if somehow she knew. If she'd even orchestrated the whole thing. If that moment was her considering, her having the slight hint of a conscience for the first and last time in the countless millennia of her life.

Or if, somehow better, somehow so much worse, she hadn't known at all. And all that it had been was a moment of weakness. A moment of fear. A single moment where the fabricated love she'd made and wrapped him up in turned real.

He took a few of them down. He was sure of that at least, that he had heard the heavy thunk of bodies hitting the floor as he shot blindly in the dark. The doctor told him later that it was four, all kills. His first, if she was telling the truth, not that it mattered. He was surprised in a distant way when she told him that it really didn't matter. But there was a level of satisfaction in knowing, at very least, that he caused some amount of pain to the mechanism by which his home was shattered, and his life damned.

It was a clean shot that did it. The bullet cut a path directly between his ribs, drove a hole through his heart, and broke and shattered the rib below on its way out, angled down. He knew because the doctor told him, and because he could feel the path of it even now, driving through his chest, stopping on one side of his mechanical heart, and starting again on the other, as carving and bursting and shattering as the moment it was torn.

He never learned what happened to the rest of the band that had ransacked the manor and lain in wait. Just that the doctor had taken care of whoever was left and carried his bleeding body to her lab, which had been protected more securely than the rest of the manor. And then she'd begun her work.

He didn't remember a lot of it. Only the tearing through his chest as he shot wildly and then suddenly didn't, and then a miasmic blur of copper and blood and tears and pain.

Through all of it, all that he could remember at least, Dr. Carmilla's face was blank as she methodically tore him apart and put him back together to her own specifications. He wasn't sure how long it took, if he lay open on that operating table for hours or days, feeling every push of metal into flesh, every pump of blood as it spilled out of him. And every time he passed out (or died, he wasn't sure) it was only a matter of time before he was awoken by a new searing pain and the onslaught began again.

He wasn't sure when or how it ended. Only that one moment he was writhing against his bindings as the doctor dug into him, and that the next he was unbound and held close against her chest as she shushed into his hair.

He was out of tears, out of anguish, out of anything but emptiness as the doctor rocked and murmured against his temple.

"You're perfect," she said. "I've done it, Jonny. And you're perfect."

And it sickened him for the years and years and endless years to come that in that moment, in all of his pain, and confusion, and horrible understanding, he had swelled with pride.

It wasn't long before he was well enough to leave (the doctor did her work well) and he could find no grief in him that it would be the last time. He was sick of the place, and Dr. Carmilla, it seemed, felt the same. They burned it, then left before the flames had even begun to die.

Then they traveled, and traveled, and stole, and killed. And Jonny drank and died again and again, with a sick glee at the horror on his opponents faces when he got up anyway.

And Dr. Carmilla wanted. First a ship to get off planet. Then a bigger one. Then a band and a crew.

And as time passed, the perfection she had once seen in Jonny dimmed to a dull cast of dissatisfaction. Whether for the primitive design of her early work, or for Jonny himself, it didn't seem to matter. They were one and the same to her, and Jonny would be hard pressed to disagree.

And if that annoyed him it wasn't because her wandering interest meant the creation of more young immortals and the torturous experiments she subjected them too. And it certainly wasn't because he missed that small satisfied smile that graced her countenance every time he tore himself apart for her.

No. He didn't have to have a reason.

After all, people only have to have reasons in good stories. And this one wasn’t.


End file.
